In the United States there are approximately 5,000 hospitals with delivery services in which approximately 3.7 million babies are born each year. Resuscitation is required for a significant number of these babies. Current research suggests that resuscitation is necessary for about 80 percent of the 30,000 babies with birth weights less than 1500 grams, and for an unspecified additional number of babies weighing more than 1500 grams at birth. Thus, asphyxia continues to be a major neonatal problem, with resuscitation frequently being required in institutions without specialized neonatal expertise. This challenge has been recognized by both the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
The Working Group on Pediatric Resuscitation, formed in 1978 under the auspices of the Emergency Cardiac Care Committee (ECC) of AHA, has developed guidelines for neonatal resuscitation. Further, a National Conference on Pediatric Resuscitation was convened in December, 1983 under the auspices of AHA, and one of their conclusions was that a training program for neonatal advanced life support was urgently needed. ECC's guidelines for neonatal resuscitation were updated in 1985 and endorsed by AAP. One of the stated goals of the guidelines is that "at least one person skilled in neonatal resuscitation should be in attendance at every delivery. An additional skilled person should be readily available . . . "
As at outgrowth of this work, a neonatal resuscitation course, by Bloom et al. entitled Textbook of Neonatal Resuscitation, (1987, 1990), has been jointly produced and made available by the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The goal of the neonatal resuscitation course is to provide the materials and training necessary (according to AHA-AAP guidelines) for health professionals in the neonatal resuscitation field. Obviously, competent performance of resuscitation procedure is a matter of major importance since mistakes can result in injury or even death. For this reason, training and the use of training devices must be closely monitored by experts in neonatal resuscitation instruction. Supervised clinical experience is regarded as a prerequisite for any individual who is to assume responsibility for a portion of a neonatal resuscitation. The purpose of the present invention is to facilitate this instruction.
The interactive neonatal resuscitation simulator and method presented herein provide a trainee with a life-like simulation of a resuscitation process on a newborn infant, and in particular, a life-like simulation of what an attending physician would experience while resuscitating a newborn infant at a resuscitation station within a hospital's delivery room.